AI WEIWEI

After denouncing government corruption
and lack of respect for human rights and freedom of speech in China, he was
arrested, beaten, placed in isolation and forbidden to travel.

His activity as
a dissident has gone hand in hand with his artistic career and he has continued
to produce work testifying to his political beliefs while at the same time
making plenty of room for creativity and experimentation.

His output over the
past thirty years allows us to explore his ambivalent rapport both with Western
culture and with the culture of his own country – torn between a deep-rooted
sense of belonging and an equally strong urge to rebel.

Ai Weiwei was born in 1957 in Beijing. His father, the
poet Ai Qing, was labeled a “rightist” in 1958 and Ai and his family were
exiled, first to Heilongjiang, in northeastern China, and then soon after to
the deserts of Xinjiang, in northwestern China.

Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Ai Qing was
rehabilitated and the family moved back to Beijing. Ai would enroll at the
Beijing Film Academy and was one of the original members of the ‘Stars’ group
of artists.

Ai moved to the United States in 1981, living in New York
between 1983 and 1993. He briefly studied at the Parsons School of Design. In
New York, Ai would discover the works of Marcel Duchamp and Andy
Warhol. Returning to China in 1993 to care for his ailing father, Ai
contributed to the establishment of Beijing’s East Village, a community of avant-garde
artists. In 1997, he co-founded the China Art Archives & Warehouse (CAAW),
one of the first independent art spaces in China.

He began to take an interest in architecture in 1999,
designing his own studio house in Caochangdi, on the northeast edge of Beijing.
In 2003, Ai started his own architecture practice, FAKE Design. In 2007, as a
participant of documenta 12, Ai brought 1001 Chinese citizens to Kassel as part of his Fairytale project. In 2008, Ai and the Swiss
architecture team of Herzog and de Meuron designed the Beijing National
Stadium.

In 2010, Ai covered the floor of the Turbine Hall at Tate
Modern with 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds.

In 2012, Ai Weiwei was awarded the Václav Havel Prize
for Creative Dissent, by the Human Rights Foundation.

In 2015,
Ai was awarded the Ambassador of Conscience Award, by Amnesty International,
for his actions in support of the defense of human rights.

In 2017 his epic film journey 'Human Flow' participed to the 74th Venice International Film Festival. The film gives a powerful visual expression to the contemporary massive
human migration. Captured over the course of an eventful year in 23 countries, 'Human Flow'
follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretches across the globe
in countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany,
Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey.

Selected Activities

2014

Name omitted from UCCA Beijing publication for their show celebrating work of late curator Hans van Dijk

Name removed from the Shanghai Power Station of Art show, 15 Years Chinese Contemporary Art Award, due to pressure from local government cultural officials. The show chronicled the history of Uli Sigg’s art award, created in 1998, to help foster China’s contemporary art scene.

2013

Curator of the exhibition Fuck Off 2, Groninger Museum

Released first music album The Divine Comedy in June

Participated in the Venice Biennale

2012

Subject to 2012 documentary film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry directed by American filmmaker Alison Klayman which received the Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Defiance at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

WeiWeiCam, a self-surveillance project involving live 24-hour online feeds from his house and studio, was shut down by Chinese authorities 46 hours after the site went live

Subject of the 2012 documentary film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, directed by American filmmaker Alison Klayman, which received the Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Defiance at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

The self-surveillance project, WeiWeiCam, a live 24-hour online feed from his house and studio, was shut down 46 hours after the site went live by Chinese authorities

Raised 9 million RMB over social media as bail for fabricated tax accusation from the Chinese government

2011

Prohibited from leaving Beijing without permission for one year

Detained at the Beijing Capital International Airport, imprisoned without reason for 81 days

Studio was searched and the hard drive from the main computer taken away

Co-curator of the exhibition Shanshui, The Museum of Art Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland

Suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage, which according to doctors was linked to the police attack

Beaten by the police for trying to testify for Tan Zuoren, a fellow investigator of negligent construction and student casualties during the Sichuan earthquake

Blog shut down by Chinese authorities in May after names of victims and numerous articles documenting the Sichuan Earthquake investigation were published

2,700 posts, thousand of photographs and millions of comments were deleted by authorities

Co-curator of the exhibition The State of Things. Brussels / Beijing, exhibited at Bozar Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium and the National Art Museum, Beijing,China

Conducted an investigation aiming to compile a list of students killed in the Sichaun earthquake by 12 May 2009, the earthquake's first anniversary. As of 14 April 2009, the list had grown to 5,385 names

2008

“Citizens’ Investigation” project, researching information about students who died in the Sichuan earthquake.

Investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of so-called "tofu-skin schools" in the Sichuan Earthquake on May 12th, 2008